HoneyBook vs Dubsado vs Raoura: the real 3-year cost, fees included

TL;DR: On the same $60,000 per year of client payments, split evenly between cards and bank transfers, three years costs about $5,013 on HoneyBook Starter, $3,806 on Dubsado Starter, and $3,413 on Raoura. The subscription price is the smaller half of that story: payment processing fees are 79% of HoneyBook's three-year total, mostly because HoneyBook charges an uncapped 1.5% on every bank transfer while Stripe (which Dubsado and Raoura route through) charges 0.8% capped at $5. Dubsado adds a cost no pricing page shows: a one to two week setup, or $1,500 to $2,500 for a specialist to do it for you. Disclosure: Raoura is our product, and it is in this comparison because its flat $17 per month and no-markup payments are the whole point of the exercise.

Search "HoneyBook vs Dubsado cost" and you will find monthly prices, sometimes annual prices, and almost nothing else. We checked the top ranking pages for this query in July 2026.

Not one of them computed a total cost beyond 12 months. Two quoted subscription prices that were retired in 2025. Only two combined the subscription with payment processing fees at all, and both stopped at a single one-year scenario.

That is a problem, because for a working freelancer the subscription is not the biggest number. The fees your client tool takes out of each payment usually are. So this article does the arithmetic the vendors and the affiliate lists skip: three years, subscription plus processing fees plus setup, on the same client payments, with every input traced to the vendor's own published page in July 2026.

The 3-year totals, up front#

On $60,000 per year of client payments (half by card, half by bank transfer), three years costs $5,013 on HoneyBook Starter, $3,806 on Dubsado Starter, and $3,413 on Raoura, before counting Dubsado's setup cost.

The model: you collect $60,000 per year across 24 client payments of $2,500 each, 12 paid by card and 12 by ACH bank transfer. You sign up new in July 2026 at list prices, on annual billing where it is cheaper, and stay three years.

Card fees are nearly identical everywhere (HoneyBook charges 2.9% + 25 cents on Visa and Mastercard, Stripe charges 2.9% + 30 cents), so the two lines that actually separate these tools are the bank transfer fee and the subscription. Every input is sourced in the sections below.

One caveat before the detail: this is a cost article, not a feature verdict. If you want the head-to-head on features, setup, and Dubsado 3.0, that is our full HoneyBook vs Dubsado comparison.

Subscriptions: what 3 years of each plan costs#

Over three years at July 2026 list prices on annual billing, HoneyBook runs $1,044 (Starter) to $3,924 (Premium), Dubsado runs $1,005 (Starter) to $1,575 (Premier), and Raoura runs $612 on its single plan.

Sources: HoneyBook pricing, Dubsado pricing, both fetched July 2026. Dubsado shows annual prices on its pricing page; the $35 and $55 monthly figures are from its own pricing table page.

Two things this table hides. First, the entry plans are not equivalent: Dubsado gates its scheduler and automated workflows behind Premier, and HoneyBook Starter is a single-user plan with its fuller AI assistant sitting on higher tiers. If you need scheduling on Dubsado, your real three-year subscription is $1,575, not $1,005.

Second, both companies raised these prices recently: HoneyBook by up to 89% in February 2025, Dubsado by up to 68% in December 2025. A three-year projection at today's list price is, on recent form, optimistic for both. We track the HoneyBook history in our price increase guide.

Raoura is $17 per month, one plan, everything included. That is $204 per year and $612 over three. There is no annual-versus-monthly spread because there is only one price. Disclosure: Raoura is our product.

Processing fees: the bigger line item#

A freelancer collecting $60,000 per year pays roughly $1,323 per year in processing fees on HoneyBook and $934 through Stripe, and the entire gap is the bank transfer fee: HoneyBook charges an uncapped 1.5% while Stripe charges 0.8% capped at $5 per transaction.

Here is where the money actually moves, and where every stale comparison article fails you.

HoneyBook processes payments itself and you cannot connect your own processor. Its current help center fee table lists Visa and Mastercard at 2.9% + 25 cents, Amex and Discover at 3.4% + 9 cents, card-on-file payments at 3.4% + 9 cents, and ACH bank transfers at 1.5% with no cap, per HoneyBook's transaction fee article. Its marketing pricing page says card fees "start at 2.7% + 10 cents"; the same page's plan table says fees start at 2.9% + 25 cents. We could not find any help article substantiating the 2.7% figure for US Visa or Mastercard payments, so we model with the help center's numbers.

One genuine point in HoneyBook's favor: it reimburses the processing fee when you refund a client, which Stripe does not.

Dubsado does not process payments and adds no markup. You connect Dubsado Payments (built on Stripe), Square, or PayPal. Through Dubsado Payments in the US: 2.9% + 30 cents on US cards, 4.4% + 30 cents on international cards, and ACH at 0.8% capped at $5, per Dubsado's processing fee documentation.

Raoura works the same way on rails you already own: clients pay invoices through your own Stripe account at Stripe's published rates, currently 2.9% + 30 cents on domestic cards and 0.8% ACH capped at $5. Raoura adds nothing on top and never holds the money; it settles in your Stripe account, not ours. The longer argument for why that architecture matters is in Why your client tool should never touch your money.

!A paid Raoura invoice with three line items totaling $3,150 and a banner reading "No fees added by Raoura. Paid straight to your Stripe."

The fee model this whole article is about, printed on the invoice itself: nothing added, paid straight to your own Stripe.

The card lanes are close to a wash. The bank transfer lane is not:

A $10,000 ACH payment costs $150 on HoneyBook and $5 through Stripe. Freelancers with retainer clients and four-figure milestones live in exactly the rows where that gap is widest, which is why milestone-heavy billing makes the processor question a subscription-sized decision on its own.

Run the mix from our model (12 card payments and 12 ACH payments of $2,500 each per year): HoneyBook takes $873 in card fees and $450 in ACH fees, $1,323 per year. Stripe takes $874 in card fees and $60 in ACH fees, $934 per year. Over three years that is $3,969 versus $2,801, a $1,168 gap on identical client behavior.

The setup line nobody prices in#

HoneyBook takes hours to a couple of days to set up, Raoura is designed to be running in an afternoon, and a full Dubsado configuration is a one to two week project or a $1,500 to $2,500 specialist invoice.

No pricing page carries this line, but your calendar does. Dubsado is the deepest customization engine of the three, and the price of that depth is assembly: forms, canned emails, packages, payment schedules, and automation Flows that you wire together yourself. The clearest evidence is that an official Certified Specialist economy exists to do it for you, with published done-for-you rates around $1,500 to $2,500 USD and complete builds priced higher. We broke down those published rates in Why Dubsado setup costs $1,500 to $3,000 in specialist fees.

Count it honestly, one of two ways. If you hire a specialist, Dubsado Starter's three-year total in our model rises from $3,806 to roughly $5,306 to $6,306, which is more than HoneyBook.

If you build it yourself, budget 20 to 40 evening hours; at a modest $75 per hour of billable time displaced, that is $1,500 to $3,000 of opportunity cost that never shows up on a receipt.

Either way, "cheaper than HoneyBook" is only true of Dubsado after you have paid the setup toll in money or in weekends.

HoneyBook's onboarding is genuinely fast, which its higher fees quietly fund. Raoura's answer is to need less setup in the first place: one plan, opinionated defaults, and a four-step checklist on the dashboard that ends with your first invoice sent.

!The Raoura dashboard: a short setup checklist with 3 of 4 steps done, outstanding invoices totaling $4,330, and counts for clients and invoices in a simple sidebar layout

The entire setup surface: a four-step checklist, then you are invoicing. No specialist economy required.

The totals at different income levels#

The three-tool ranking holds at every income level we modeled, but the gaps grow with income: at $120,000 per year of client payments the three-year difference between HoneyBook Starter and Raoura is $2,768.

Same model (half card, half ACH, $2,500 average payment, entry plans, annual billing, DIY setup), at three income levels:

Two readings of this table. If your clients pay mostly by card, the tools converge: card fees dominate and are nearly identical, so the difference shrinks toward the subscription gap.

If your clients pay mostly by bank transfer, the gap blows past this table: at $60,000 per year all-ACH, three years is $3,744 on HoneyBook, $1,365 on Dubsado, and $972 on Raoura, because Stripe's $5 ACH cap almost erases fees entirely.

That last number is worth stating plainly: a freelancer collecting $60,000 per year entirely by bank transfer can run three full years of Raoura, subscription and all fees included, for $972. HoneyBook's bank transfer fees alone on the same payments are $2,700.

What could move this math#

Both incumbents repriced within the last 18 months, so treat any three-year projection at list price as a floor: HoneyBook raised prices up to 89% in February 2025 and Dubsado up to 68% in December 2025.

Things that could change the totals above, in both directions.

HoneyBook runs frequent promotions (25% off badges were live on its pricing page when we checked) and offers a 30-day trial plus a 60-day money-back guarantee, so your first months can cost less than list. Dubsado grandfathered existing subscribers at pre-December-2025 rates, so if you already pay $20 or $40 per month, your personal math is better than this table until you leave.

Both companies' recent history says list prices go up, not down, and neither publishes any commitment to hold them. Raoura's position on this is structural rather than promotional: one flat price is the product, and repricing games are the wound we exist to avoid.

If the totals push you toward switching, the mechanics are covered in our export walkthroughs for migrating from HoneyBook in a weekend and migrating from Dubsado without breaking in-flight projects.

Verdict: choose by how your clients pay#

If your clients pay by bank transfer, the three-year cost ranking is Raoura, then Dubsado, then HoneyBook, and the spread is measured in thousands of dollars, not tens.

Choose HoneyBook if polish, built-in scheduling, and speed of setup are worth roughly $1,600 more than Raoura over three years to you, and your clients mostly pay by card, where its fee disadvantage nearly disappears.

Choose Dubsado if you need its customization depth and you are honest about the setup toll: it is the cheapest incumbent on paper, and the most expensive to switch on in practice. Take the full feature comparison with you.

Choose Raoura if you are a solo freelancer who needs proposals, contracts, invoices, milestones, and a client portal, and wants the smallest number in every row above: $17 per month flat, payments through your own Stripe at Stripe's rates, no markup, no setup project. Disclosure: Raoura is our product, so weigh this paragraph accordingly and check the math yourself; every input is linked above. The head-to-head detail is in Raoura vs HoneyBook and Raoura vs Dubsado.